The only understatement connected with Bad Taste is its title. Everything else about this low-budget science-fiction/horror gross-out spoof is proudly and disgustingly excessive. Bad Taste (90 minutes, $79.98) was made two years ago in Britain. Although it won a fantasy film festival prize in Paris in 1987, it was unable to find a theatrical distributor in the United States. Home video has come to the rescue. Anyone who finds the Friday the 13th series tame and thinks Freddy Krueger has worn out his welcome can thank Magnum Entertainment for restoring repulsion to the home screen.

You don't have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing, or so sang Bob Dylan. When it comes to measuring the mood of his team, Ray Rhodes gets by with a barometer. "He has the best barometer of any coach I've been around," defensive end William Fuller said. "He knows exactly where this team is. I think the fact that he played the game and played it fairly recently helps. He's able to get a real feel for the mood of the team. "He does a great job at that. He gets it from meetings and from watching practice.

When Michael Perilstein decided to switch careers to compose and produce film scores, he said, he found only two avenues open to him - pornography and horror. He chose the latter. With one album behind him and another about to be released, Perilstein figures he still has some work ahead of him in the trenches before he leaves the world of horror. Godzilla Vs. Your Mother, tagged "Original Film Score (From As-Yet-To-Be- Made)" movie is to be delivered to music stores this month.

He steals with animal swiftness across the overgrown garden path to the back door of the darkened mansion, where a lone light illuminates his unsuspecting victims. Neighbors' dogs start to bark. Moments later, the knife-wielding killer bursts through the door and carves his fury in blood - brutally stabbing the daughter in the face before turning the blade on her screaming mother. It was like a scene from the kind of horror movies Larry Stromberg liked to make. But this time, police said, he played the monster.

Hannibal Lecter is about to hang his next victim from a balcony overlooking a piazza in Florence, Italy. With the unctuous concern of a Saville Row tailor, he solicitously inquires: "Bowels in or out?" Since the poor fellow is gagged and in no position to answer, Lecter makes the choice for him. In one of the many gruesome moments splattered across Ridley Scott's Hannibal, Lecter guts the man with a practiced slash. The victim's intestines spill down to the square below as he dangles from the rope.

Eve Brent, 81, a veteran character actress whose most recognizable role was Jane to Gordon Scott's Tarzan, died Aug. 27 in Sun Valley, Calif. Ms. Brent rebooted the character of Jane, Tarzan's civilized love interest, in the 1958 films Tarzan and the Trappers and Tarzan's Fight for Life , after Jane was left out of the two previous Tarzan movies. She said she took the part to please her son, who was then about 6. But although it raised her profile, she later concluded it had been a disastrous career move.

DURING HOLLYWOOD'S glory days, the biggest stars - Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, etc. - wouldn't be caught dead in a horror movie. In 2011, however, horror is no longer a scary word for actors. Mr. James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, stars with his wife and Oscar winner Rachel Weisz in "Dream House," which opens today. That was Colin Farrell biting necks in August's "Fright Night," while Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro became the Wolfman in 2010. On TV, FX's new series "American Horror Story" will feature such names as Dylan McDermott, Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy.

Tonight, four men will get together to do something they have done hundreds of times: watch horror movies. But tonight they will do it at Mount Ephraim's Harwan Theatre with about 200 other people. The friends, three from Audubon and one from Philadelphia, showed their first horror-film double features at the single-screen house two years ago. "The four of us get together and watch horror films on video," said Dan Fraga, 26, a teacher at Haddon Heights High School. "Every Halloween we used to mope and wonder why no one shows horror films on the big screen anymore.

Starting tonight, the big screen at the Piazza at Schmidts will be covered in red - and it won't be from a wide-angle shot of the stands at a Phillies game. The Philadelphia Underground Film Festival has partnered with IFC Midnight and its Fantastic Fest to create Monster PUFF, screening five new horror films on five October nights. The best part? It's free. Kicking the festival off at 9 tonight is "The Horde," an East Coast premiere that slashes through an apocalyptic battle of gangsters, police officers and zombies.

FAMED filmmaker John Carpenter is proud of his career and accomplishments, but sees no need to make things more complicated than they are. One of the myths that has taken on the aura of fact surrounding his classic "Halloween," which made both Jamie Lee Curtis and him stars, was that Carpenter was trying to draw an allegory to the dangers of casual sex. "No," Carpenter said recently by phone. "That's not why I made it. I made it for the same reason it resonates with people. " Which is?

IT CAME from the West Coast Video in Audubon, N.J. If Exhumed Films had a tagline like the horror movies it celebrates, the above line may suffice. Even if New Jersey, from some perspectives at least, doesn't have the same terrifying connotation as a black lagoon or outer space. For the past 15 years, Exhumed Films has specialized in showing rare horror films. Some feature familiar (hockey-masked) faces, and others only made brief appearances at drive-ins and grindhouses before time forgot them.

HALLOWEEN COMES early this year for fans of the wild and the weird. The Philadelphia Museum of Contemporary Art presents a terrifying lineup of horror entertainment and activities during its Mausoleum Art Show and the Mausoleum Horror Convention, an all-day event that includes short films, a trivia contest, a drawing workshop, and vendors. Friday night's lead-in to the convention is the Mausoleum Art Show of Horror, which will feature the North American Tour of Terror, a selection of nine short horror films.

The French haven't exactly been famous for their horror films, having entered the game only in the past two decades with a crop of directors including Eric Valette ( Maléfique ), Alexandre Aja ( High Tension ), and Pascal Laugier ( House of Voices ). That is, unless you count the prolific visionary (or charlatan, depending on your point of view) Jean Rollin (1938-2010), a master of the peculiarly Gallic genre, the fantastique, and who released 52 features between 1968 and 2009.

What follows are edited excerpts from Tirdad Derakhshani's horror-movie chat Thursday on philly.com: Tirdad Derakhshani : Dear horror-movie aficionados, today I'd like to talk about what makes a horror movie good. What are the best horror movies ever made? I'm troubled by most mainstream critics' best-of lists because they include virtually the same films. Sure, it's critical consensus - or is it laziness? A large majority of the films listed were made after 1980, almost all after 1970.

DURING HOLLYWOOD'S glory days, the biggest stars - Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, James Stewart, etc. - wouldn't be caught dead in a horror movie. In 2011, however, horror is no longer a scary word for actors. Mr. James Bond himself, Daniel Craig, stars with his wife and Oscar winner Rachel Weisz in "Dream House," which opens today. That was Colin Farrell biting necks in August's "Fright Night," while Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro became the Wolfman in 2010. On TV, FX's new series "American Horror Story" will feature such names as Dylan McDermott, Jessica Lange and Frances Conroy.

Eve Brent, 81, a veteran character actress whose most recognizable role was Jane to Gordon Scott's Tarzan, died Aug. 27 in Sun Valley, Calif. Ms. Brent rebooted the character of Jane, Tarzan's civilized love interest, in the 1958 films Tarzan and the Trappers and Tarzan's Fight for Life , after Jane was left out of the two previous Tarzan movies. She said she took the part to please her son, who was then about 6. But although it raised her profile, she later concluded it had been a disastrous career move.

It promises to be as frightening as a dive into the Black Lagoon, an expedition to Skull Island, or a night in the woods at Camp Crystal Lake. And that's how people like it. The fifth annual Terror Film Festival opens Thursday, presenting three days of the creepiest independent films to be found this side of the Borgo Pass. "People like being scared," said festival director Felix Diaz, who is also a producer, writer, and performer. "There are a lot of levels and shadings, and academic intellectualism, but in the end: It makes your heart race.